Star Trek Beyond Roddenberry (2016)

As expected, Paramount released the first trailer for next year’s Star Trek movie alongside the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you haven’t seen the adrenaline pumping music and quick cut trailer yet:

It is pretty and flashy. It shows the neophyte crew in danger (probably of Kirk’s making). It shows new enemies and snarky camraderie. I’m ready to take the ship out again.

I understand why some people have it in their mind how a Star Trek movie should look. I was one of them. I wanted the nostalgia, the action, the moral dilemma.

I realized that I’ve been disappointed in the Star Trek movies that felt like long television episodes or rehashed old stories. And I am not so steeped in the Roddenberry way that I can’t let go. As an aside, I haven’t found any casual Star Trek fans who hated either of the reboot movies.

What if… just what if the hardcore fans held on to the ideal of trying to translate Star Trek’s television charm to the movie screen for so long that we’ve lost sight. We’ve succeeded in getting Star Trek out to the masses again.

With a summer release and being a Bad Robot (JJ Abrams) production, we know it will be an action movie first. This first trailer definitely shows the adventurous side we’ve come to see in the reboots.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t see some of the cowboy diplomacy made famous in TOS. That doesn’t mean that the new aliens are all about killing and not about brokering peace. That doesn’t mean we won’t see a movie without unnecessary misogyny (spoiler: its all unnecessary)

With a July 22nd release date, we have plenty of time for more trailers and more chances for the studio to shape our expectations.